Review: Fire Emblem Warriors (Switch) ~ Tactical Warplay

Back in 2015, I reviewed Hyrule Warriors. A game I liked quite a lot. I have finished the game and I have been playing it here and there on the Switch as well. But, another similar game has been released on the Nintendo Switch with Fire Emblem characters. That’s the game I want to take a look at today. Fire Emblem Warriors, it’s one of the games why I wanted to buy a Switch. Because I wanted to play this game. Was it worth the purchase or should I try to get a refund? At first I was a little anxious since I haven’t played a lot of Fire Emblem games so I was worried that I wouldn’t get a lot of the references in this game. Let’s quit stalling and let’s take a look at Fire Emblem Warriors and give my honest opinion on it. As usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the content of this article and/or the game in the comment section down below. Just one more thing to note: I played this game with all the DLC included.

The Fire Emblem

The story of Fire Emblem Warriors follows mainly Rowan and Lianna in their quest to restore the Fire Emblem after the attack on their kingdom. Like in Hyrule Warriors, the story takes you in a journey where you meet different characters from different games.

You learn how to restore the Fire Emblem pretty quickly. You have to find different heroes from other dimensions. Now, that’s a better story and explanation then how it happens in Hyrule Warriors.

Anyways, the story in this game is decent but if I may be very honest, extremely predictable. I enjoyed the story quite a lot but I was able to see the twists and turns coming from a mile away. Maybe it’s my bias for the Zelda series talking, but I felt that Hyrule Warriors had a better story.

Then again, the humor and writing in this game was quite enjoyable. I really liked the atmosphere between characters and the pacing of the game. While the story didn’t surprise me, it did entertain me. So, it was successful in it’s job. Now, something what I really loved was the voice acting.

After I finished this game, I really missed the voice acting in Hyrule Warriors when I started to play the HD remake on the Switch. The voice acting adds so much to this game. The characters came alive and I loved hearing their lines. While there is a Japanese voice pack in the eShop for free, I will stick with the English voice acting. Since I felt it added so much to the game.

Now, how does one cross the gameplay of the Fire Emblem series with the Dynasty Warrior series? Fire Emblem games are turn based and don’t mix too well with the action gameplay the Dynasty Warrior games are known for. Yet, the developers found a way to make it work. Before I talk about that, I would like to explain the gameplay of Dynasty Warriors first.

So, if you are unfamiliar with the Dynasty Warriors series or haven’t read my review on Hyrule Warriors, let me quickly explain how the game works. Know, that this are only the basics and that the mechanics go much deeper.

In this game, you take control of a warrior with specific abilities. The warrior is strong against some enemies and weak against others. Now, you control this warrior in the battlefield where you can kill multiple enemies at once with one attack. It’s a hack-and-slash game after all. On the battlefield, you have some important locations. These are called forts. If you conquer these forts, you can have a strategic advantage against your enemies. The more forts a player has, the more allies/army they can spawn and the better they can control the battlefield.

The game is lost when your main fort, your stronghold has been taken over. This happens when your general that defends the fort is killed. Of course you can also loose when all your heroes are dead or when the lose conditions are met. But that’s besides the point.

There is a second strategic point on the battlefield. Now, these are the outposts. There are little places between forts that spawn soldier for who controls it but doesn’t provide all the advantages a fort has.

So, in this game you go from one fort to the next until you are able to find the stronghold of your enemy and either take over their stronghold or defeat the main enemy general. This all happens in real time. Compare this to the slower gameplay of Fire Emblem, where you have similar mechanics of strengths and weaknesses but you take turns in attacking. You have a turn to move all your allies and attack and when everybody has moved, your enemy gets their turn.

The way that the developers combined this, is something I felt missing in Hyrule Warriors. you are able to order the other heroes to take over a fort, defend a fort, defend an ally, attack an enemy general or go to a location. And with the press of a button, you can swap between heroes. Something I felt that missed in this mechanic is that you are unable to order the AI to take over outposts. It seems that those aren’t important to conquer…¯\_(ツ)_/¯ … While conquering them actually gave me some benefits during some tense battles.

The frame rating

Oh dear lord, the frame rate. If you enjoy playing this game at a stable framerate, may I recommend that you don’t touch the multiplayer mode. I played this game several times with a friend and we both noticed the slowdowns.

Now, I don’t mind slow downs that much. After all, I enjoy playing old school retro games where some games only get 10-20FPS. If the game is still playable, I don’t mind at all. Yet, while playing this game in multiplayer, there were several moments where it felt that the game dropped in the single digits. Thankfully, this game runs quite smooth in single player and in docked mode. I rarely had slowdowns and when I had them, they fixed themselves in a matter of seconds.

Granted, I only tested the framerate on a couple of maps and one TV. It might be possible that the multiplayer frame rate is more stable for some people but beware of it when you decide to play this game in multiplayer.

That said, I love playing this game. I felt that I was playing through Hyrule Warriors all over again but this time with a Fire Emblem skin. I have put over 100 hours in this game and I haven’t completed this game at all. Now, you are able to play through the main story in a day or two. But if you want to unlock every character and get every upgrade for each character and finish all the missions and maps on every difficulty… Well, you have a game that can take over 200 hours.

During my summer holidays, I played this game quite a lot. All the different mechanics that this game has made the formula that I played over and over again in Hyrule Warriors new and fresh. I can understand that this game can get repetitive and boring for some players, but I didn’t have that issue.

Something I had an issue with is remembering all the different strengths and weaknesses of the characters. I knew that some characters where strong against dragons and other characters where strong against Pegasus characters but I wish there was a system where you could more easily see this. There are different symbols on the map giving you this information, but this can get quite confusing real fast.

For example, there is a certain sword that Chrom can equip that makes short work of Dragon enemies. In that case, those enemies appear with a red circle, white background and black “!” mark. Now, if I would check this for a character that’s weak against dragon enemies, this changes into a red circle. And to be honest, I’m not even sure it works that way.

I could look it up, but the point is that you shouldn’t have to look it up. You should be able to read it in a manual or in a tutorial somewhere in a menu. Now the tutorial that is in the game doesn’t explain everything. Changing the icon on the enemies you are weak against in a skull and crossbones would help quite a lot.

That said, a big positive of this game are the controls. I found the controls very responsive and easy to use. To a point that I even had trouble adjusting when I started to play Hyrule Warriors. Now, I played this game using the normal Joy-con combo, but the game also supports a lot of other controllers.

The controls are great. There is an overall control scheme for each fighter so you don’t have to remember special button combinations to execute a special attack of one character.

That sound

There is this mechanic I didn’t use a lot at the start but I learned in the mission mode was pretty strong, and that’s two characters pairing up. This helps to level up both characters and makes their special attack stronger. How it exactly works you will have to find out by playing the game.

Now, something I really liked in this game was the sound design and the soundtrack. I haven’t played a lot of Fire Emblem games but even I was able to recognize the various iconic sounds from the series like the level up sound.

The music also sounds like it’s a remixed version of already existing Fire Emblem music. The orchestral soundtrack has pieces that fight everything the story and setting throws at you while playing this game. From sad music when something tragic happens to melodic war music that encourages you when you are finally making great headway in the battle.

Another thing I loved in this game was a rather small thing but did quite a lot. One big annoying thing in Hyrule Warriors is that you had to wait and actually pick up special loot like weapons and materials that generals dropped. If you didn’t pick it up before the battle ended, you hadn’t collected it. In this game, you automatically collect it. This is such an amazing feature.

Speaking of the materials and special weapons, the UI to upgrade your characters in this game isn’t the best. Personally, I liked the UI of Hyrule Warriors a bit better. It gave a full overview of the whole tree so you could see more easily if there are any upgrades available. But, this is the only thing I can say that the UI does wrong.

A minor nitpick I have is that in the map screen, changing characters is a bit tricky in my opinion. It didn’t always work for me right away and I always had to search for the option. But, I quickly got used to it.

I’m glad I did, since this game is a visual masterpiece. The animations and the visual presentation of this game is really well done. The detail that went into some battlefields and animations is just jaw dropping. Personally, I love the map with the big bridge at the top. If I explain a bit more, I’m about to spoil parts of the story.

Now, there is a lot to do in this game. Outside of the story, you have the various maps where you can sort of replay famous scenes from the Fire Emblem series. I used these missions to try out all the fighters I didn’t use in the story mode and I also used it to level up certain characters. I have one negative about these and that’s the difficulty spike. On some maps, the level gap between some battles is too big. You have battles with enemies of level 30 and next to it, you have one of level 80. And when you finish the story on normal mode, you are give or take level 50. So yeah.

This isn’t representative of the difficulty. While the hardest difficulty really pushes your skills with the game to the limit, the easiest difficulty isn’t a cake walk on the later parts of the story and the later missions. This game can be challenging if you aren’t paying attention or if you don’t manage your resources right.

So, I could keep talking and talking about this game but I have said the most important things. It’s time for a conclusion, time to wrap up this article.

Conclusion

The bad:

-The framerate in multiplayer.

-Some UI elements could be a bit better.

The good:

+ Amusing story.

+ Great music.

+ Amazing visual presentation.

+ …

Final thoughts:

Now, I thought I would be burned out of the formula after Hyrule Warriors. But, that isn’t true at all. Fire Emblem Warriors brings a lot of new things to the table I kept enjoying the game until the final moments.

While I have beaten the story and a lot of the missions, I play the game from time to time to get myself closer to unlock the secret and hidden characters. Also, I enjoy hearing the music and getting myself through a lot of battles.

The biggest letdown is the frame rate when you play this game in multiplayer. The frame rate is so low, I felt it went into the single digits. Thankfully, this never happened in the single player game.

If you enjoy Dynasty Warriors or Hyrule Warriors, I can highly recommend this game. If you enjoy playing Fire Emblem games, I highly recommend that you check out this game. This game is one of the better games I have played on my Switch so far and I can’t wait to completely beat this game.

Thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to meet you in another article but until then, take care and have a great rest of your day.

About NekoJonez

I'm a Belgian game blogger. I write a diary on the games I play and collect. So, I play retro and modern games. Console or PC, it doesn't matter to me, as long as I'm having fun.
I write first impressions, reviews and I also give my opinion on various elements of the gaming industry or game design. I'm also very active behind the scenes to aid other gaming bloggers with various things.
Outside of writing, I'm a hobbyist stage actor, graduate network manager and various other things.
When you want to be up-to-date with the latest things in my life: http://twitter.com/nekojonez
Reviews, first impressions and more. Visit my blog: https://arpegi.wordpress.com/

I might pick this one up on sale sometime in the future. I thought Hyrule Warriors was fun and enjoyed Dragon Quest Heroes as well, and since Fire Emblem is one of my favorite series chances are I’d like this too. Great review!

Fire Emblem Warriors is the best game on the Switch in my opinion. It’s the one I’ve played the most and the one I continuously go back to enjoy. I love this game. That being said I can fix your multiplayer issues right now.

Go to game settings (in the extra menu)
scroll down to display settings
Put it in performance mode.

Whenever I play Fire Emblem Warriors multiplayer it’s always in performance mode. There are still some minor fps drops, but nothing as significant as you described here. Enjoy gaming with your friend dude!

Another thing I would like to add is the weapon triangle and what those symbols mean. When you see an arrow pointed up on the map that means that whatever unit you’re currently facing has a tactical advantage over you. Meaning if you use a sword guy and go up against someone with a spear you’ll do less damage and they’ll do more. You can take that advantage away by going to the Smithy and adding bonuses to your equipped weapons. This game can get pretty deep if you get into customizing your characters. As far as Hyrule Warriors goes I enjoyed that game too, but I’m much more invested in the Fire Emblem series so I enjoyed this game more than that one :).